Escaping Voldemort
by JustBecomes6PM
Summary: Jane, a Muggle-born witch who'd been in Ravenclaw house, comes into contact with a powerful American wizard, who takes her on as an apprentice. In the process of her training under this man, she'll learn powerful magic that she'll use to fight Death Eaters.
1. Chapter 1

Jane woke up. The light was reaching through the crack of the curtains and shone into her eyes. She raised her hand and covered her eyes, and in that moment, she wished she could get some new curtains that would close all the way.

 _One of these days,_ she thought, _having that crack open in the curtains is going to be the end of me._

She sat up and reached for her wand—ten and a half inches, acacia wood and a dragon heartstring core. When she'd first gotten it two years prior, Olivander had told her that it'd be a difficult wand to master, but when it had gotten used to her, she'd be able to produce some powerful magic with it. She stuck the wand in her pocket as she got up from her bed.

She walked downstairs. The old man was sitting at the dining room table, sipping on some coffee and flipping through _The Daily Prophet_. His wand, a ten inch wand with a slight curve on the handle, was sitting across the table close to where he was placing his coffee cup.

Jane studied the man silently for a moment as he raised and lowered his cup periodically. She didn't even know the man's name, and yet she'd let him stay there, in her house, overnight.

The more she thought about it, the less it made sense. She didn't even know the man's name. The only explanation she could come up with was that she was desperately lonely after her mother had run off and abandoned her.

The old man himself had that look to him that only came with great wisdom, or at least so Jane had assumed. He had the grey beard, but lacked the arrogance of an old man who'd become set in his ways; and when you were in his presence, you got the impression that this was someone who had spent his life fighting the good fight.

Jane stepped down from the stairs into the dining room.

"You're awake," he said.

"Yeah,"she said. "Did I oversleep?"

"No," he said. "You're right on time."

Jane sat down across the table from the old man.

"Last night I said I'd give you an explanation for all of this, didn't I?" he said, his American accent sounding a little thicker now that he had a little bit of caffeine in his system.

"Yeah."

"As you no doubt know, Voldemort has taken over the British Ministry of Magic," he said. "Because of this, there will no doubt be little room for a Muggle-born such as yourself to return to Hogwarts."

"I _never_ said—"

"You never had to," the American man said. "Once upon a time, I grew to be acquainted with a Hogwarts professor named Flitwick. Perhaps you've heard of him; he does speak so highly of you in his letters."

 _Flitwick,_ she thought. He'd been her head of House when she was at Hogwarts—when she was still welcome at Hogwarts, of course. The American man had been right to say being Muggle-born had put a thorn in her plan of returning to the Ravenclaw dormitory that year.

"He's a good teacher," Jane said.

"And an amazing wizard. I remember hunting dark wizards with him twenty years ago. It's a shame he's not still in the business; I think he could give some of those Death Eaters a run for their money."

"So why come all this way?" Jane said. "You're not British. America is going to be safe from Voldemort for years, even if he does want to expand outside of Britain and Ireland."

"Because I want to gather up a couple of young, gifted Muggle-borns," he said. "I want to train them. When the time comes, I want them to be the spark that burns the Death Eaters to the ground."

"There's a prophecy."

"About that Potter boy?"

"Yeah, him. They say he'll be the one who beats Voldemort."

The American shrugged. "That all depends on the wording of the prophecy," he said. "Have you ever heard the exact wording of the prophecy?"

Jane shook her head.

"Then how do you know he'll beat Voldemort? How do you know that Harry Potter will _kill_ Voldemort himself? Maybe he'll clear the path for someone else to do it."

Jane nodded. "Fair point," she said. "But why come to me first? There's better witches than me. If it weren't for Voldemort, I'd be going into my third year of Hogwarts this year."

"Because you're the one I had the easiest access to," he said. "Some Muggle-borns are hiding away somewhere that I can't easily find them, even if they are the same age as you. Some are old enough to have fled the country. Others simply don't want to be found.

"But you? Well, where else do you really have to go? Your mother disowned you last month because she couldn't fully understand how dire things are for you right now. You never knew your father."

"For me, it's either follow you, or risk being caught by Voldemort's cronies."

"Exactly. So will you let me teach you?"

Jane began to nod. The old American raised a finger.

"Don't say yes immediately," he said. "Some of the things I'm going to teach you are things they wouldn't have taught you at Hogwarts for years. Some of the things I'm going to teach you are spells that are so difficult, even the most powerful, experienced wizards I've ever met have had difficulty with them.

"The road ahead is going to be filled with difficulty, and I'll be showing you magic that will stretch your abilities to their limit. Will you let me teach you these things, Jane?"

"On one condition," she said.

"I'm listening."

"You tell me your name."

He smiled. "My name," he said, "is Thomas Albus Dresden. I'm from Chicago." He paused for a minute and said, "Do you want some breakfast?"

Jane smiled. "Yes please."


	2. Chapter 2

After breakfast, Jane and Thomas sat at the dining room table in silence for ten minutes. Jane felt this was awkward, but Thomas didn't seem to notice too much—he was too engrossed in his copy of _The Daily Prophet,_ which Jane was only now realising was dated from the previous week.

"I have a question," she said.

Thomas looked up. "Ask away," he said. "I've only got the rest of my life."

"How exactly do you plan on getting around the trace?" she asked. "I mean, it's illegal for me to use magic outside of school."

Thomas picked up his wand and pointed it at the centre of Jane's forehead. He tapped it twice, and an almost transparent blue field went around her.

"Like that," he said. "The spell will make your magic untraceable for the time being, but there's limits to the spell. Usually it'll last for a couple of months or so, but that's based on how much an ordinary person will be using magic and the kinds of spells they'd be using.

"Because of the stuff I'll be teaching you, it'll only last a few weeks. Some of it's pretty advanced, and would give some of the most powerful sorcerers alive difficulty. I've been working on something that'll make the spell last longer—it'll be a bracelet, you see; it'll be subtle enough that most people won't notice it. But until then, I guess I'll have to renew the spell every few weeks."

Thomas paused for a moment and breathed in. "Alright, your next question is going to be if I know who my next target is going to be. The answer is _yes, potentially;_ but I have to make some preparations first."

"Preperations?"

"Yeah. I found this abandoned manor in Scotland. We'll be going there today. But once they're there, I'm going to teach you how to make a wolfsbane potion. Do you know what that is?"

"It's used to make the effects of lycanthropy less severe," Jane said. "It's considered to be a difficult potion to make properly, because of how aconite can be poisonous in large doses."

"Exactly," Thomas said, nodding. "Spoken like a true Ravenclaw. Scotland happens to be one of the few places where wolfsbane grows in abundance, so sometimes you'll see werewolves moving there if they happen to have the skills needed to brew the potion but not necessarily the money to buy the ingredients."

"So the one you want to pick up is a werewolf," she said.

"There's two of them," he said, raising two fingers. "A pair of twins: a boy and a girl. Nineteen years old. They went to Hogwarts briefly, but they felt that they'd have been unwelcome after they were bitten shortly before their sixth year started.

"Quite tragic, really. They weren't particularly gifted when it came to magic, but they were incredibly gifted when it came to potions and herbology."

"I'm not horrible at herbology."

"No, you might not be. But if what I've heard about these two is correct, you'll feel like you are in comparison."

"So how do you know all this?"

"I've dedicated my life to fighting dark magic in ways that Aurors can't. What I've found is that the common people are often well equipped to fight dark magic in its earliest stages, should they be given the proper training beforehand.

"Don't take this as disrespect towards Hogwarts, Jane. Plenty of fine witches and wizards have walked out of there. But ever since Voldemort cursed the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, you've had a revolving door of teachers that simply didn't have the time to train anyone for the task at hand.

"I can do that. Perhaps after this war is done and Voldemort is defeated, I can teach at Hogwarts for a time. But we can't defeat Voldemort right now—first, we must escape him."

Thomas stood up. "Come on Jane, I'll take you to the manor."

"But what about clothes?"

"Don't worry about clothes. We can get some from the village this afternoon. There's a fairly large wizarding population in the area we're going, so a large chunk of what we're doing will go unnoticed."

Jane followed Thomas outside. On the front lawn sat two broomsticks. Both of them were fairly recent models, she saw; the kind that traveled fast.

"Have you ever flown before?"

"Yeah. They give us lessons in our first year of Hogwarts."

"So not much."

She shook her head.

"It's okay; just follow me and you'll be safe."

The flight to the manor was largely uneventful. Most of the trip was overcast, so there wasn't ever much of a clear sight of what was happening on the ground; but there was always the constant sense that something evil was afoot.

As the two landed, Jane was taken by the sight of the manor. It was one of the largest places she'd ever seen in person, except for Hogwarts and a few shopping centres in the Muggle world.

The manor was built of dark brown bricks. On each of the side walls were climbing roses that had long since died, but standing there, Jane knew they must have been quite beautiful in their day. A couple of the windows on the third floor were broken, but the curtains on the inside of them seemed to be largely undamaged.

Jane looked around. The lands around seemed to stretch out for almost forever, with the exception of a village that had a couple of buildings on a hill a few miles away.

"It'll need a bit of fixing up," Thomas said.

"Pardon me?" Jane said.

"The manor," the American said. "It'll need a little bit of fixing up."

"It looks lovely," she said.

"It _looks_ lovely," Thomas said in agreement. "But it needs some protection spells. I can teach them to you as I'm doing them; you'll need to know how to cast them. And we'll need to do some repairs on the greenhouse; but that shouldn't take too long. And I do suppose those windows will need to be fixed, and the roses replaced."

The American wizard looked down at Jane's fingers. "Your fingernails are different."

"Pardon me?"

"Your fingernails. They're a different colour."

Jane looked down. Her fingernails were black now.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Sorry—I'm a Metamorphmagus. Sometimes my fingernails change colours."

"And everything else about you, no doubt," Thomas said. "Flitwick did say that you had these abilities, but I never did think I'd get to see them so soon." He paused for a minute. "Are you sure you're a Muggle-born?"

"Not really," Jane admitted. "I never knew my father."

"Dead?"

"Possibly. I never met him. Mum said he abandoned us."

Thomas nodded. "Alright," he said. "Come inside. I'll show you your room and then we can get you some clothes."


End file.
